Striking a deal with Iran will be “extremely difficult,” Halevy said. “It needs a lot of creativity. And courage, political courage.”

“The perception is that Israel is going through the stages of sanctions, etc. not with the idea or conviction that at the end, the other side will yield,” he said. “If the purpose was to exert pressure to bring the other side to the table, the rhetoric should be different.

“Negotiating with Iran is perceived as a sign of beginning to forsake Israel. That is where I think the basic difference is between Romney and Obama. What Romney is doing is mortally destroying any chance of a resolution without war. Therefore when [he recently] said, he doesn’t think there should be a war with Iran, this does not ring true. It is not consistent with other things he has said. […]

He adds:

Obama does think there is still room for negotiations. It’s a very courageous thing to say in this atmosphere. In the end, this is what I think: Making foreign policy on Iran a serious issue in the US elections — what Romney has done, in itself — is a heavy blow to the ultimate interests of the United States and Israel. It is not as if, if he wins the election, and gets into the White House, he can back up. The Iranians are listening attentively to what he says. When he says, he would arm the opposition in Iran. They understand.

And for bonus points: as Halevy sees it, Romney is botching more than just the Middle East:

Romney has been very costly on Russia […] If you want to create a situation, where the only way to go about things is to go back to the Cold War, that is what is being done here. It’s very dangerous.

I don’t think the US public wants to go to another world war over values in this way. If it persists, it will be a slide down a very slippery slope.

It’s a question of concept. Where are we going in the 21st century? Are we going to try to propagate policies on the battlefields?

Well, that is the question. If you’re Romney foreign policy team….well, we’ve already seen their answer.

(BTW — Halevy has a history of pounding on what he sees as obvious stupidity. Among his other services, he stands as a reminder that not all Israelis, including those who served in government or the security services, are lockstep Likudniks.)

But pay this no never mind. It’s not as if the former Israeli spymaster and head of Israel’s National Security Council has more insight on such matters than the man who spent his war encouraging the French to give up wine and coffee.

Snark aside: The growing sense that Romney simply should never be allowed to be the man who decides when and whether to send Americans into harms way may explain this: the (to me) unexpectedly happy distribution of political donations made by members of the military.

https://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/balloon_juice_header_logo_grey.jpg00Tom Levensonhttps://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/balloon_juice_header_logo_grey.jpgTom Levenson2012-10-22 18:14:152012-10-22 18:17:14When The Former Head Of Mossad Calls You a Moron...Or Why You Don't Hand Over Foreign Policy To An Out-Of-His-Depth-Hack Guided By The Worst People In The World

It’s really sad, but I get the impression that the Israeli political spectrum is actually more sane than the American one when it comes to things like war with Iran. As in, more people like this willing to come out and say that it’s crazy, and more people willing to follow them.

(Not to diminish the fact that Bibi is a fucking lunatic, and for my money, probably more dangerous than Khamenei).

Query: to what extent will Romney even more firmly and resolutely commit the US to precarious positions vs Iran, Russia, and China in tonight’s debate, if elected? He sees his mission tonight as trying to make the sale to the American people that Obama’s product is weak while his is strong, to close the deal first and then determine how to actually proceed later. He doesn’t seem concerned about how he may in the process be severely damaging his own options on American foreign policy should he win the election. He fails to realize that arrogant bluster alone is not an effective foreign policy, except perhaps for rogue nations like North Korea who have little else to maneuver with, nor is infinitely compounded military might enough of itself either, or the US would have won in Vietnam and not become hopelessly bogged down in Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, this debate will be a plus for Romney in that he will use the occasion to assume faux authority and gravitas on foreign policy, where none has been earned. But he won’t go near his expertise in the Caymans or the Swiss banks.

It should be obvious to all that foreign affairs and especially critical matters of war and peace, like concerning Iran these days, should not be left up to anyone claiming home is the republican party.

They are psychotic with this shit and the greatest threat to world peace there is. The crazy is wrapped up in an amalgam of resentment from losing the national pol edge on the topic, self loathing they can’t control their own self destructo impulses, and the subsequent haunting failured Bush presidency, manifested with the horrors of Iraq and neglected Afghanistan — that filtered through the wingnut mind means we have to bomb somebody else to make this right.

I don’t think he really gives a shit about foreign policy or has given much thought to what he’ll do if elected. But I think he’ll be easily pushed towards even more extreme positions by the neocon crowd (I don’t know who’s now carrying Cheney and Rumsfeld’s mantle, but the mindset is sure as hell still out there), not to mention people like Bibi.

So yeah, expect the Bush administration’s policies ramped up a few degrees, IMO.

Not to diminish the fact that Bibi is a fucking lunatic, and for my money, probably more dangerous than Khamenei

QFT. No doubt in my mind about that. I think Khamenei is a pretty smart operator and not a lunatic at all.

But the Village has been in love with Bibi for a very long time. He lived here for years, he knows them all (the media and the pols and the lobbyists). They swoon for him the same way they swoon for McCain. It’s so homoerotic that it should be banned during the family hour. Which doesn’t exist any more.

@Chris: The Israeli public will have to deal with the consequences of whatever happens with Iran in a very real way. The average American will just slap a new “Support the Troops” sticker on their air-conditioned SUVs and whine about gas prices as they drive from shopping mall to fast-food drive through to comfortable suburban home. The soldiers themselves largely come from the ranks of the working class and so are invisible to most of their countrymen. In America, consequences are always for other people. Always.

Yeah, that’s what I attribute it to as well. Israel is on the front lines. Everyone’s served in the military. Say what you want about them and I could say PLENTY, but they’re not nearly as detached from the realities of their actions as Americans are.

He doesn’t seem concerned about how he may in the process be severely damaging his own options on American foreign policy should he win the election.

It’s not clear to me that Romney intends to follow through on any of his foreign policy rhetoric. I have a feeling this is an area where he’s most inclined to shake the Etch-A-Sketch after the election is over and try to adopt a slightly saner (if still beligerent) foreign policy than what he’s promising. It may still limit his options because he’s needlessly antagonizing people he may actually want to make nice with, but I think that’s a greater constraint on his potential foreign policy than any qualms about going back on what he promised during the campaign.

Romney will try to look all presidential tonight and offer large heapings of gibbersish without getting tangled in the details. But it won’t be enough.

Everyone expects Obama to say “Bin Laden is dead”–and he will. But most Americans really haven’t been exposed to the incontrovertible fact that Mitt Romney explicitly said he would not go into Pakistan to get Bin Laden. Romney said that Obama would be “naive” to contemplate upsetting Pakistani leadership by staging an attack like the one completed by Seal Team Six.

I’d bet my bottom dollar that Obama has some heavy artillery of this type aimed at Camp Romney tonight.

It’s really sad, but I get the impression that the Israeli political spectrum is actually more sane than the American one when it comes to things like war with Iran.

I’d really like to believe this, but how do they explain putting a truly dangerous leader like Bibi into power and keeping him there, given that, as Beltane at #9 points out, it’s their necks on the line even more so than ours. Is their democracry even more f’ed-up than ours in terms of being able to coax sane policy out of an only partially sane electorate?

I have a feeling this is an area where he’s most inclined to shake the Etch-A-Sketch after the election is over and try to adopt a slightly saner (if still beligerent) foreign policy than what he’s promising

Larison has written several posts over the last couple of weeks demolishing this argument. The short version is that there simply isn’t any evidence of Romney backing away from or standing up to the most hardcore Neocons in his foreign policy clique. At least on domestic policy issues he’s left behind a trail of pander-scat, if you know where to look. On FP, not so much.

@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: The reason for Bibi’s ascendancy is only party about foreign policy and is mostly due to the support he receives from the various religious parties, i.e. crazy people on account of the financial largess his government showers on said crazy people. As they say, all politics is local.

@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: We should also be mindful of the fact that Romney, like all Republican presidents, will appoint legions of unqualified, corrupt hacks to key positions which will inevitably lead to disaster after disaster. I can’t believe people, even liberals who should know better, have forgotten this already.

Tonight has the potential to make the “47% video” even deadlier for Mittster than it has in the past, because the money shot in that tape was his dismissal of the Palestinians, effectively killing his capacity to even pretend to be a fair arbiter of peace talks.

If Obama can link that to Halevy’s skepticism that he can deal with Iran as well, all the better.

I’d really like to believe this, but how do they explain putting a truly dangerous leader like Bibi into power and keeping him there, given that, as Beltane at #9 points out, it’s their necks on the line even more so than ours.

The miracle of parliamentary democracy, and multiple, fragmented parties each looking for some power. Funny how some Americans yearn for the same kind of system, and believe that it will give progressives more of a voice.

That could be. But it will depend in part on whether, or how badly he wants a second term. And almost every first term president wants one of those.

The GOP is now and becoming more so every day, a neo confederate party. That is not going to change because they fooled voters into electing a multiple choice clown in a three piece suit in a bad economy. The natives will want things through their neo con spokesmen, and Iranian scalps are near the top of that bucket list from hell.

If Romney wants a second term, he will begin campaigning for it the day after he is sworn in this Jan. He would take the helm with the ultimatum the republican party beast be fed, or else. He will not talk to Iran, nor do anything other than recite the grocery list of demands he is handed by his handlers.

@Chris: The ironic thing is that some of these tiny psycho parties would be quite happy to live under a caliphate or reincarnation of the Persian empire if they could maintain a degree of autonomy from all things secular while awaiting the coming of the Messiah.

I get the impression that the Israeli political spectrum is actually more sane than the American one when it comes to things like war with Iran.

Israelis, ultimately, are citizens of the state of Israel, which is a different thing from the concept of “Israel” as invoked in US politics. It is a very small country with a very screwy electoral democracy and some pretty interminable internal problems before even considering security, but one thing it does have is a fucking vigorous political society in terms of what it’s acceptable to say about the people running the country.

The natives will want things through their neo con spokesmen, and Iranian scalps are near the top of that bucket list from hell.

Not to mention that both the words and actions coming from a Romney admin will embolden the more hardline factions in Iran and cut the ground out from under anybody on that side looking for a compromise position. Escalation will occur on both sides, first rhetorically and then with what follows.

I’m assuming he thinks he can do the Reaganesque thing of talking tough in public but sending his emissaries behind the scenes to negotiate with Bibles and cakes in hand. Unfortunately, despite what Mr. Romney seems to think, it’s not 1979 anymore.

Depends what you mean by “control.” Do they send out a memo every day dictating what the media does and says? Of course not. Do they send out endless press releases like other powerful lobbying interests (ie the oil industry, the healthcare industry, the finance industry) knowing that the reporters who receive them are too busy to do more than rewrite the press release? Of course they do, so — as with many other issues in our society — press releases end up creating reality.

here simply isn’t any evidence of Romney backing away from or standing up to the most hardcore Neocons in his foreign policy clique.

There is no there there. With Bush, there was a big fucking scary neocon there, but the utter foreign policy vacuum in Team Mittens scares me even more, because that implies that it’s going to be dictated by unelected, unaccountable fuckers like Bill fucking Kristol and Clifford fucking May and Frank fucking Gaffney.

I have a feeling this is an area where he’s most inclined to shake the Etch-A-Sketch after the election is over and try to adopt a slightly saner (if still beligerent) foreign policy than what he’s promising

Based on what? There’s no particular pattern to Mitts behavior other than:

A) Do what makes me richer
B) Do what makes the people standing in front of me happy

You cannot run US foreign policy simply bending to every political breeze that blows past you. Foreign policy is almost unique in that everything you say will be interpreted in the most cynical sense by someone, and then reacted to as if it were policy. Mitt should have already learned that the hard way, but I don’t think he has, or has the capacity to.

Unlike other areas of government, where the actual policy steamrolls any individual or groups reaction to something the executive says, in foreign policy other nations have legitimate power – either through the UN or individually. Even little nations have significant power, and they can take your words and respond accordingly, whether you intend them to or not. Even if Mitt desires a softer policy, he’s completely incapable of managing his words and that will always lead to worse outcomes than he might want. And you just can’t divorce the two when the results are the same.

JERUSALEM, Sept 10 (Reuters) – Israel thanked U.S. President Barack Obama on Saturday for his “fateful” role in helping evacuate its besieged Cairo embassy, saying all his influence in Egypt had been brought to bear.

“I would say it was a decisive moment — fateful, I would even say,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose relationship with Obama has long been soured by the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, told reporters.

“He said, ‘I will do all that I can.’ He did that. He applied all of the means and influence of the United States of America, which are certainly substantial. And I think we owe him special thanks.”

We should also be mindful of the fact that Romney, like all Republican presidents, will appoint legions of unqualified, corrupt hacks to key positions which will inevitably lead to disaster after disaster. I can’t believe people, even liberals who should know better, have forgotten this already.

This. To me, one of the innovations of the Bush Administration was the realization that they didn’t need to bother with getting any laws or regulations changed, they could just appoint people to run agencies who would energetically undermine everything they had just sworn to uphold. I know they weren’t the first to try this (James Watt, anyone?), but it seems to me there was a much more concerted calculation to avoid publicly opposing things that were popular (and thus avoid any accountability) and just trash them from within.

One hope for the debate: if Mittens launches his tired line about “road to Greece”, that PBO responds by pointing out that a big problem in Greece was that rich people didn’t think they had to pay taxes.

you know, I am still amazed that Romney got a pass on releasing his tax returns.

Totally agree. I cannot believe that Obama/Biden and the DNC let this matter drop.

It was low-hanging fruit for the debate. Something like, “you hide the details of your tax cut proposals just like you hide your tax returns. You hide them because if people knew what they were, they wouldn’t vote for you.”

I also would trace it to Reagan (had to look up who Watt was when I read that) based on what I’ve read about conservatives’ relationship with the CIA. It used to be they attacked it from the outside, trying to have it either shut down (J. Edgar Hoover), investigated (Joe McCarthy) or kept on a very tight leash (Nixon via Kissinger). Under Reagan that approach was changed to simply appointing a crony at the CIA who would report what they wanted to (Casey reportedly actually rewrote his analysts’ conclusions when he disagreed with them and presented that to the NSC as “inteligence”); Bush repeated the process with Porter Goss.

This is the sort of shit the civil service, the Pendleton Reform Act and all that stuff was supposed to get rid of. God preserve us all from political appointees.

Yeah, I’d have to agree with this. The need to appear impartial is driven by international considerations, not by domestic ones (and the GOP has given less and less of a shit about that as time goes by). As far as the public’s concerned, Israel could simply ethnically cleanse the entire West Bank by the end of the year in the Milosevic tradition and I don’t even think that would provoke a reaction. Too many Americans are invested in “Israel always right,” those who aren’t either don’t give a shit or are afraid of being labeled terrorist sympathizers.

As far as the political spectrum is concerned, a pro-Palestinian or even substantively unbiased position is as much of a losing proposition as gun control in our day and age. IMO.

“Governor Romney, many people claim Democrats aren’t tough enough to lead our country. I’d like you to know that I have Ann and Tagg, Track, Bumpo, Rover, and Ben in the back room. Joe Biden will cut of one randomly selected digit every ten minutes.”

When does the debate begin? I have a bottle of fine 12-year-old scotch at the ready.

I look forward to the BJ commentariat’s pearls, but hold little hope for an Obama “win.” Mitt would have to do something really rash and unexpected for that to happen, like, I dunno, calling the President a niCLANG or seeing the Angel Moroni in a vision while on stage.

Too old for chugging, and waaaay too old for butt-chugging. If I were to watch the damn thing, I’d be headed straight for the gin, but it’s easier on the nerves to turn on the baseball game and read about it here. Cole has saved my sanity, and possibly my marriage!

I really wonder if he’ll manage to betray the teabaggers and wingnuts by tacking to the left of Obama. I really wonder if the surprise is that he becomes Jimmy Carter and accuses Obama of being a drone-flinging warmonger.

It becomes a Blue Dog moment: why would you vote for a fake Democrat when we have a real one to vote for?

The ideal situation here would be him failing to win over Democrats, and upsetting too many of the wingnuts, and getting 27% of the popular vote as most Republicans stay home and sulk, believing his last minute swerves to be the real Mitt.

My second prediction: Watch for happy noises from both candidates on the issue of climate change. It polls well, and people care a lot about the issue since the weather turned so darned hot this year. As you can expect, Romney will have a lot of doubletalk gobbledygook, but he’ll try to throw as much word salad into the mix as he can.

You cannot run US foreign policy simply bending to every political breeze that blows past you. Foreign policy is almost unique in that everything you say will be interpreted in the most cynical sense by someone, and then reacted to as if it were policy.

Absolutely, and one line that PBO has against Mittens is “you can’t Etch-a-Sketch foreign policy.” Because you can’t. There is no Faux News or mighty wurlitzer in Foreign to spin your shit into gold; everything you say will be taken as policy, and changing what you say because Frank Luntz focus-grouped it and Bill Kristol likes it sets up a position where the US becomes an “erratic foreign power”.

@arguingwithsignposts: I pointed out his “If I paid too much I would consider myself unfit to be president” followed by tax returns that showed 14% taxes when he should only have paid 9%.

You can’t even get them to listen to their candidate’s words anymore. Someone just started demanding Obama’s transcripts. Someone else wanted the media to investigate the $1 million Obama’s used to hide his past.

FSM, I wish I could do that. Fucking PA laws are always a century behind all their neighbors. We still have to buy beer at beer distributors or a bar. We can only get wine at the very small number of grocery stores that have an attached state liquor store or an actual state liquor store. And the stores with Sunday hours are even fewer.

I’d love to be able to buy beer and wine anywhere. I’d love to vote early and forget all this theater. I envy you, my neighbor.

Outstanding painting. The artist so totally captured the man, including the gesture of bringing the hand to the heart as a greeting, which is widespread in the Middle East and elsewhere in the Muslim world.

Romney would be an obvious disaster in foreign affairs as well as domestic policy. He’s already conveniently shown that this past summer on his ridiculous foreign policy tour. He also is compromised on China with his business philosophy. Finally, his entitled attitude backed up by this stupid notion of American Exceptionalism – something that has never actually existed in our entire history will simply antagonize allies and rivals alike.

And, of course, unlike Biden, the one heart attack away Ryan knows next to nothing about foreign affairs.

Obama better bring it tonight though I’m betting not many people will actually watch the debate.

@raven: The wording is terrible. If they said would it be okay if we took out millions from public education would that be okay?, then maybe it would have a chance. Fulton county has long lines for early voting but I might try on Sat with my sons.

@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: I thought it was some kind of joke in “Strange Brew”, but you’ve got to go to specific state sponsored liquor stores in Canada too. At one store in NB, they delivered it from the back of the store via a conveyor. Weird!

I’ve got to say too, I was not impressed by the beer choices in Canada either.

My daughter wants to vote early. She’s been canvassing in Pittsburgh, her first time.
Her boyfriend’s father told her “Rose, this isn’t a swing state” which made me laugh, because she’s a little drifty and artistic. I got the feeling he starts a lot of conversations with her like that: “Rose, this isn’t ….fill in the blank”
Not that she would listen. At all. He’ll figure it out eventually.

Many years ago (maybe still?) Colorado required liquor stores and bars to close on election day until the polls closed. Used to piss off my drinking buddy. “You expect me to vote for these clowns sober?”

@geg6: Yeah, I grew up in Pittsburgh. PA laws on alcohol are really stupid. I never got it; I know PA has been described as two cities on either end with Alabama in the middle but that’s only partially true. York and Lancaster and State College are hardly Alabama. Still very strange.